New Holland is the biggest town on our list by a wide margin, more than five times the population of the next-largest community we cover, and it didn't get there by accident. It's been the commercial center of eastern Lancaster County for over a century, first as a farm-supply and rail town, later as headquarters to a company that's now known well outside the county.
The company that put New Holland on the map
In 1895, the same year the borough itself was incorporated, a local businessman named Abe Zimmerman started the New Holland Machine Company here. It made farm equipment, and it's still making farm equipment, just under a much bigger name today.
New Holland Machine Company grew, over the following century, into what's now Case New Holland, a globally known farm-equipment brand still headquartered in the borough it's named after. It's the reason a town this size shows up on agricultural industry maps next to cities many times its population.
The borough's other well-documented piece of history sits inside the Eastern Lancaster County Library: a museum collection of more than 150 instruments tied to the New Holland Band, a group founded in 1829 that served as a regimental band during the Civil War. Between the two, New Holland has more actual documented history per block than most towns its size, and its identity is still tied to that equipment business today in a way most of the towns around it can't claim: a genuinely global brand name still headquartered in a borough of under six thousand people.
Old core, new edges
As the commercial hub of the area, New Holland grew earlier and denser than most of the towns around it. The borough core is turn-of-the-20th-century construction, built up around the same years the machine company was getting started: narrow lots, older framing, entry doors that have seen decades of daily use in a way a suburban front door never does. Ring the core and the picture changes to newer development from the last few decades, standard modern openings, builder-grade doors and windows installed to a spec instead of built by hand. We end up working both sides of that line in the same week sometimes, swapping a worn entry door on a hundred-year-old rowhome one day and handling a window replacement on a fifteen-year-old build the next.
That mix also changes what the repair-or-replace conversation looks like depending on which side of town we're standing on. A rowhome entry door from the early 1900s might just need proper weatherstripping and a rebuilt threshold to see another twenty years, which is a repair conversation more than a replacement one. A fifteen-year-old builder-grade door that's already sagging on its hinges is usually a replacement conversation, full stop. We walk through that distinction in more general terms on our repair or replace page, but New Holland is probably where we apply it most often, simply because there's more entry-door traffic here to begin with.
A borough with its own rulebook
New Holland is also the only one of our closest six communities that's an incorporated borough with its own local government, rather than a census-designated place inside a township. That happened in 1895, the same year Abe Zimmerman started his machine company, and it gave New Holland its own borough council, its own zoning authority, and eventually its own rules about what can and can't change on a building's exterior in the parts of town where that applies. It's worth a call to the borough office before committing to a specific product here, in a way it usually isn't in the unincorporated villages nearby.
Before it was New Holland, the settlement went by at least three other names: Hog Swamp, Earltown, and New Design, each reflecting a different period before the town's current identity settled into place around its 1895 incorporation. That kind of naming history is common for towns that grew up gradually around a crossroads rather than being platted and named all at once, and it's part of why New Holland's oldest building stock doesn't share one consistent style. What got built under one name doesn't always match what got built under the next.
Rowhomes from New Holland's early-1900s building boom come with their own set of practical considerations. Shared walls mean a door or window replacement on one unit needs to account for how it reads next to the identical unit attached to it, since a mismatched style stands out immediately on a block where every house was originally built the same. Interiors from this period are usually finished in plaster over lath rather than drywall, and any house built before 1978 may have lead paint somewhere in its layers, both of which call for a more careful approach than the same job on a fifteen-year-old subdivision house at the edge of town.
Frequently asked questions
Does New Holland Borough have rules about exterior changes to older buildings?
Some parts of the borough may, since New Holland has its own local government and zoning authority, unlike the unincorporated villages nearby. We'd rather a homeowner check with the borough office before settling on a specific product than find out afterward that something needs adjusting.
Are New Holland's rowhome doors harder to replace than a standalone house's front door?
A little, mostly because they need to look right next to the identical door on the attached unit. We measure and match style carefully on rowhome blocks so a replacement doesn't read as obviously new next to a century-old neighbor.
Is Case New Holland still connected to the town, or just the name?
Still headquartered in the borough today, not just lending its name from somewhere else. That's part of why New Holland, despite being a town of under six thousand people, shows up on agricultural industry maps most towns its size never would.